


Shared Custody

by bluebells



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Human, Alternate Universe - College, Humour, M/M, Pre-Slash, Professors, Sibling Rivalry, Teaching Assistants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebells/pseuds/bluebells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer convinces Michael that he needs a teaching assistant. Lucifer may regret this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Custody

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [adam_milligan_prompts_round1](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/adam_milligan_prompts_round1) collection. 



> Sorry this is more pre-slash, but I wanted to post this rather than not post at all. I hope you still enjoy it, anon!

"Do it."

"No."

_"Do it."_

"No." 

Lucifer hears the hint of a smile that time, and pounces. "Do you know what teaching assistants cost these days? They slashed our department's budget."

"I told you to stay with medicine. You wanted to smell the roses." Michael's look is dry over the rim of his cup. He pushes the short pile of applications across the table and the cup settles onto its plate with a haughty ring. "I don't have time to train a teaching assistant."

"Michael, you're a researcher, not a lesson planner."

"And you're a botanist. Don't counsel me."

Why does his brother have to be so difficult? Why couldn't Michael see this was a win-win situation? 

"You need someone to share the teaching." Lucifer pushes the pile of papers back to his brother. "Pick someone who knows what they're doing."

Michael's hands hover over the keyboard of his laptop. Lucifer just shrugs as his brother glares from him to the applications. People weren't exactly beating down Michael's door to assist; his reputation as a cold, short-tempered recluse had made the rounds after his last intern quit in a tearful fit of frustration.

_"I just can't learn! He never shares his plans, I've got no support and he leaves me hanging at faculty meetings, I feel like such an idiot!"_

Anna had shown such promise.

"Nobody knows what they're doing," Michael mutters, thumbing the corner of the first application. 

_Yes._

"I'll help with the interviews."

"No," Michael answers without even looking up.

-*-

They only get through five applications before Michael gets fed up. Lucifer has to steal a look at Michael's calendar and then calls the applicants himself. 

He wonders why he does this to himself.

-*-

"So, why did you apply for this position, Rachel?"

Rachel glances between them, looking more suspicious every time Lucifer poses a question and Michael folds himself further and further into their booth of the cafe. He's making little mystery of the fact he'd rather be anywhere but in the company of nobel prize winners with an IQ above 160. He's also been scowling like a very tall, very dangerous child since Lucifer confiscated his laptop after the first failed interviewee came and went without so much as an acknowledging nod from Michael.

Eye contact. Basic courtesy.

"Well, I knew it would be an invaluable opportunity to learn from one of our greatest professors." Rachel lifts one shoulder in a hopeful shrug that she's hit the mark between flattery and initiative, but - oh. It shows how little she knows after all.

"No," Michael sighs impatiently, before Lucifer can stop him. "I run a lab, not a daycare."

Rachel's face slackens in shock. Lucifer can't blame her, and still manages a thin smile when Rachel hastily regroups and excuses herself.

"Don't have children," Lucifer gently begs his brother, watching the cafe's glass door swing closed behind their latest flop.

Michael growls something of an affirmative, flipping to the next application.

-*-

It's somewhere between Lucifer's third coffee and Michael's testy reminder that they should break for lunch when Raphael surprises them at their corner table.

Her presence is an ominous cloud electrifying the air, her dark expression foreboding strict business, as usual. She thrusts an accusing hand at the mess of papers in front of them.

"Are those the applications for teaching assistants?" she demands by way of greeting. Sometimes Lucifer thought she and Michael had been separated at birth. On most days Lucifer would happily make the trade.

"They are," Michael answers cautiously.

Raphael's palm turns up expectantly. "I need the application for Adam Milligan."

"Who?" Michael's echo is uncertain, stopping when Lucifer nudges his knee under the table.

"Sorry, we can't do that, Raphael," Lucifer interrupts.

Raphael looks at him sharply, fingers curling into a loose fist. "Lucifer, are you interfering in a recruitment outside of your own department?"

"I'm here for moral support," Lucifer ignores the glare Michael burns into him. "But we can't give you Adam because... Michael just hired him."

He knows he'll pay later for pre-emptively grinding his heel on Michael's ankle to stop the question before it starts. They haven't interviewed anyone named Adam, but Michael, to his rare benefit, doesn't refute Lucifer.

Raphael levels Michael with a stare that drops the temperature in the cafe by a few degrees. "That is the last straw, Michael. I'll be watching you."

She leaves in the same whirlwind style, boots echoing on the tile as the crowd parts for her like the Red Sea.

Michael shoves Lucifer back to his end of the seat. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Trust me," Lucifer can't hide his grin. "If Raphael wanted this guy, you want him more."

-*-

For all the work Lucifer invests in getting Michael an assistant, it takes him almost a fortnight to visit and witness the fruits of his labour.

He immediately regrets leaving it as late as he did.

His first impression of Adam is a long, lean line of relaxation reading a textbook with his tennis shoes kicked up on Michael's otherwise pristine lab bench. With a grey fedora tipped low over his brow, Adam looks like the sort of student who belongs at the university bar, maybe with a guitar in his arms. Adam's tongue darts over his lips as he rolls something thin and dark (a straw? A toothpick?) at the corner of his mouth. The smooth motion in the lines of jaw and muscle makes Lucifer acutely aware of how dry his own lips are, and... well. Lucifer is secure enough in himself to admit that Adam isn't too hard on the eyes, either.

Raphael was definitely on to something.

The door clicks shut behind Lucifer. Adam looks up from his book, expression lifting into such an earnest smile of welcome that Lucifer's next thought is _Kid, I have to get you the hell out of here before Michael kills that sunshine_.

Lucifer glances around the climate-controlled surrounds of the lab and he's caught between giddiness and disappointment that Michael isn't here.

"Hey, man," Adam says and - no, Lucifer doesn't imagine it - gives Lucifer a significant once-over from shoes to the tips of his hair, smile sharpening into a grin. He's so glad he isn't Michael and actually invests in a comb. 

"Hey." Lucifer returns Adam's smile when the kid draws the straw from his lips and firmly accepts Lucifer's handshake. "So, you're Adam."

Adam spreads his arms. "You've heard of me. I wish I could return the favour, but Mike doesn't talk about anything that isn't on a slab."

Lucifer raises an eyebrow, feels his face split in a grin. " _Mike?_ "

Adam doesn't take the bait. His blue, blue eyes are steady, searching Lucifer's face. "Are you his boyfriend?"

Lucifer almost laughs. Subtle, kid. "Brother." Literally from another mother, he understood why most people didn't make the connection when they first saw he and Michael shoulder-to-shoulder.

Adam blinks, nodding mysteriously. "Huh."

"So, are you ready to quit this job and work with a real professor, Adam?"

And yes, maybe Lucifer isn't above poaching real potential, even from his own brother. Doesn't matter that he hasn't even seen Adam touch a microscope or interpret lab results. There's a reassuring intelligence in Adam's eyes that Lucifer has mourned the lack of in most of his post-graduate students - that patience to observe and make informed deductions, posit theories and plot the best places to seed suprise rosh bushes in the chancelry.

Lucifer watches Adam watching him, and he can see the wheels spinning.

He likes this kid.

"I dunno." Adam shrugs, voice teasing. He throws a glance to the bastion of alumni investments that most people on campus would chew their arm off to have in their labs. "I kind of like it here."

"And how's Michael treating you?"

Adam's head tilts to the side, and his voice is like honey and whiskey. "He treats me all right."

"He doesn't deserve you, Adam," Lucifer teases.

"Of course he does." Adam's smile is indestructible charm.

The air in the lab hushes with the soft slide of the door pushing open, and Michael hovers in the open threshold, blinking between them. In his hands are a large paper bag and two take-away mugs of coffee, all the makings of lunch intended for more than one.

Well, well. Adam - 1, Michael - 0. 

Michael hadn't even brought Lucifer so much as a muesli bar during the week he ran without sleep finishing his masters thesis.

"Lucifer." Michael sounds surprised and - what is that, cautious? 

Lucifer has a sneaking suspicion Michael didn't realise he was already on bended knee for this kid. There is no room for pleasantries. 

"Michael, you brought me lunch, so I'm feeling generous today - I'll grant you shared custody - you can have Adam two days out of seven."

Michael's expression twists in confusion as he settles lunch on the bench by Adam's satchel. Adam snorts a laugh behind Lucifer's back.

"I think I missed part of this conversation," Michael says, eventually.

"You do not deserve this TA, brother," Lucifer says.

"You don't have budget for a TA," Michael counters, shaking his head as though he's still pushing through the fog Lucifer's thrown up, but he can latch onto the simpler facts as they come.

The paper bag crinkles as Adam reaches in, and he smiles at Lucifer with a shrug when Lucifer glances back at him. "You could buy me dinner. And it's double on weekends."

Michael peers around Lucifer with a sharp look. "Did you finish marking those assignments?"

"Yesterday. And Raphael called again, but I got you another week for that paper which, yes, was due on Monday." Adam accepts his coffee, fails to hide his smugness.

Michael snarls something under his breath and leans a hip against the bench. "Damn it. You confirmed the stats in the last tables of results, right?"

"You're welcome," Adam says.

Lucifer stares at his brother, disgusted and no small measure of jealous. "You owe me _so_ much. And he takes your calls? Does he fetch your dry-cleaning, too?"

"No way, dude," Adam laughs against his coffee cup.

Michael throws Lucifer's glare back and takes the wrapped burger Adam hands him from the paper bag. Lucifer scowls at the delicious aroma that meets his nose. "I'll share half this burger with you, but you can't have my TA."

Lucifer reaches past Adam and tears a strip off the paper bag, swipes the pen resting on the open page of Adam's textbook. It doesn't escape his notice how Adam is beaming at Michael, but Lucifer feels vindicated that Adam turns the same intensity of that smile on him when Lucifer slides his phone number across the steel bench.

"For when you lose the novelty of working with an android."

Adam grins and slips the number into the pocket of his jeans. "Thanks, man. It was good to meet you."

"You, too." Lucifer's eyes narrow at his brother once his back is to Adam. Michael frowns and Lucifer just shakes his head, silently mouths _so much_ because - ugh. It was laughable that Michael didn't realise what Lucifer had just served to him on a silver platter. He owed Lucifer so much.

Lucifer will claim his first born over this. 

Michael keeps a healthy berth between them, bewildered, and steps closer to Adam as Lucifer makes his exit.

First born. Definitely. In the meantime, if Lucifer can't have Adam, he's going to make this insufferable for Michael. Starting with those pictures of Michael at age ten who thought it was so cool to dress up as an angel for Halloween. No mercy.


End file.
